Have you ever wanted attention? What have you done to earn it? Laurie in the short story “Charles”, created a fake classmate called Charles to gain attention from his parents who were busy looking after his new baby sister. He tricked his parents into believing Charles was the one misbehaving, while the one misbehaving was really Laurie. Bt acting out and being disrespectful, Laurie is recieving negative attention. Therefore, the theme of the story is actions speak louder than words. Laurie’s mother was acting bias and believed that her son would never act in such way. She was wearing rose colored glasses and couldn’t see beyond Laurie’s clever Charles stories. Although Laure’s words were a lie, his actions were out in plain sight for his mother
